Brüning succeeded in staying in office by tacking sharply to the right and appealing to nationalism, but by early 1932 the number of unemployed in Germany exceeded six million. In the election of March 1932, incumbent Pres. Paul von Hindenburg failed to obtain an outright majority, but in a runoff election the following month he outpolled Nazi leader Adolf Hitler by about six million votes. Although Hindenburg wished to replace the moribund Brüning, he was reluctant to elevate Hitler and settled on Franz von Papen. Papen, in an attempt to shore up his parliamentary standing, called a snap election in July 1932. The move was a disaster for Papen’s young administration, and the Nazis won 230 seats in the Reichstag. Papen called another election in November 1932, and the Nazis saw a significant share of their vote erode at the expense of a steadily growing Communist Party and Alfred Hugenberg’s German National People’s Party.

The political deadlock continued, however, and in December 1932 Hindenburg set aside Papen and replaced him with Gen. Kurt von Schleicher. Papen, who retained some power and influence as a vice-chancellor, persuaded Hindenburg to bring Hitler into the government, thereby creating a coalition with a majority in the Reichstag. Having thus attained his goal of reaching the chancellorship legally, Hitler took office on January 30, 1933. The democratic interlude of the Weimar Republic was effectively at an end.

In the coalition cabinet, the Nazis held only 3 out of 11 seats. They had Hitler as chancellor, Wilhelm Frick as Reichsminister of the interior, and Hermann Göring as a Reichsminister without portfolio. Notably, Göring also became the minister of the interior for Prussia, a position he used to Nazify the largest police force in Germany and establish the Gestapo. The ministry of economy and that of food and agriculture, both in the Reich and in Prussia, were held by the Nationalist Hugenberg. The foreign ministry was held by Konstantin, Freiherr (baron) von Neurath, a career diplomat of conservative views, while the ministry of defense was led by Gen. Werner von Blomberg. As vice-chancellor, Papen claimed the right to be present on all occasions when the chancellor saw the president, and, as Reich commissioner for Prussia, he controlled the principal administrative machine in Germany. In this way Papen believed that he had effectively blocked any threat of extremist action by the Nazis. He was soon to be disillusioned.

Hitler’s first step was to persuade the cabinet to agree to new elections in order to provide a majority in the Reichstag. He overcame their doubts with a categorical promise that, whatever the results, no change would be made in the composition of the coalition. The elections were fixed for March 5, 1933, and the Nazis made full use of the power that they now possessed over the apparatus of the state, including the radio, to launch a whirlwind campaign. Although the other parties were still allowed to function formally, their meetings were broken up, their speakers assaulted, and their newspapers continually suppressed. Göring, in control of the Prussian police force, displayed great energy in carrying out a purge that placed the force under Nazi control. In addition, he called up 50,000 auxiliary police, the majority of them SA (Sturmabteilung) and SS (Schutzstaffel). The police were forbidden to interfere with the many acts of intimidation carried out by the SA who were given the “freedom of the streets.”

On the night of February 27, the Reichstag building was destroyed by fire. On the pretext of a Communist plot to seize power, the constitutional guarantees of individual liberty were suspended and the Reich government given emergency powers. It was in this atmosphere of fear and insecurity that the elections were held a week later. Nevertheless, the Nazis failed to secure an outright majority, capturing 288 of 647 seats, and both the Centre Party and the Social Democrats held firm. It was only with the help of his Nationalist partners, who won 52 seats, that Hitler was able to obtain a bare majority.

Reichstag fireBurning of the Reichstag building in Berlin, February 1933.National Archives, Washington, D.C. (ARC Identifier: 535790)

Hitler’s next step was to secure the passage of an Enabling Act, which would give the government the power to issue decrees independently of the Reichstag and of the president. Passage required a two-thirds majority in the Reichstag. The 81 Communist deputies were either arrested or excluded. The support of the Nationalists and of the Centre Party (73 seats) was obtained by assurances and promises, and the Social Democrats who alone opposed the bill (March 23) were outvoted 441 to 94. The Enabling Act remained the constitutional basis of Hitler’s dictatorship. No new constitution was ever introduced to replace that of the Weimar Republic, and fresh laws were promulgated as they were required. Thus was the legal foundation of the Third Reich created.

Third Reich; Nazi PartyNazis marching under a banner that reads “Tod dem Marxismus” (“Death to Marxism”).Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Armed with overriding powers, which he had been careful to obtain without formally infringing on the principle of legality, Hitler proceeded to carry out a revolution with the authority of the state on his side. A series of decrees culminating in the Law for the Reconstruction of the Reich (January 30, 1934) abolished the Land (state) diets and transferred the sovereign powers of the Länder to the Reich. In May 1933 the trade unions organization was suppressed and the unions merged into a German labour front under Robert Ley. This was followed in the course of the summer by the suppression or “voluntary” dissolution of the other political parties. On July 14, 1933, the Nazi Party was formally declared to be the only political party in Germany.

Opposition to these measures in the cabinet crumpled before the wave of revolutionary violence which swept over the country. Papen was shorn of his authority as Reich commissioner for Prussia and was replaced by Göring. Hugenberg was unable to prevent the dissolution of his own party and was forced to resign. The Nazi group in the cabinet was strengthened by the inclusion of Joseph Goebbels as minister of public enlightenment and propaganda (March 14, 1933), but in fact the cabinet had ceased to count, and all decisions were taken by the Nazi leaders on their own authority.

Joseph Goebbels, c. 1935.Interfoto/Friedrich Rauch, Munich

There was, however, a point beyond which the process of Gleichschaltung (“coordination”), the Nazi seizure of control, could not be carried without seriously endangering the efficiency of the state and the German economy. During the summer of 1933 Hitler began to call a halt. The plans of the radical wing of the party to replace the capitalist economy by some form of corporate organization under state control were abruptly repudiated. Hitler could not afford to quarrel with the industrialists and financiers, and from June 28, 1933, Hugenberg’s successor at the Ministry of Economy was Kurt Schmitt, director-general of the largest insurance company in Germany, while Hjalmar Schacht, the new president of the Reichsbank (appointed on March 16), set his face firmly against radical anticapitalist experiments.

There was considerable opposition to Hitler’s new policy of stabilization, both from the more radical section of the Nazi movement and from those who had been left out in the scramble for positions and wanted no end to the revolution until they had been provided for. This opposition found its focus in the SA and its leader in the SA chief of staff, Ernst Röhm. From the summer of 1933 to the summer of 1934, this question of the so-called “second revolution” formed the dominant issue in German politics.

During the first half of 1934, the conservative forces in Germany came to look to the army with its particular claim to the loyalty of Hindenburg. The army leaders were inflexibly opposed to Röhm’s plans for the incorporation of the SA into the army. Hitler for his part could not afford an open clash with the army, which still remained the most powerful independent institution in the country. He needed the help of the generals in carrying out the rearmament of Germany, and he was anxious to secure their support for his succession to the presidency (which included the supreme command of the armed forces) when Hindenburg, now in his 87th year, should die.

The crisis was touched off by Papen, who on June 17, 1934, delivered a speech in which he gave expression to the anxieties of the whole nation. Hitler now knew that Hindenburg had only a few weeks to live, and on June 21 he flew to see the president. He was met with an uncompromising demand, presented by Blomberg, the minister of defense: either the government must bring about a relaxation of the state of tension or the president would hand over power to the army. Röhm had powerful enemies inside the party, notably Göring and Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer of the SS, the party corps d’elite.

When Hitler made up his mind to take action against Röhm and the SA leadership, it was Göring and Himmler who carried out the preparations for the purge. Röhm and his chief lieutenants were seized on the weekend of June 30, 1934, and executed without trial. The opportunity was also taken to settle other accounts on this “Night of the Long Knives”—among those murdered were Schleicher and the former Nazi leader Gregor Strasser. A month later, on August 2, Hindenburg died. With the agreement of the army leaders, the office of president and supreme commander was merged with that of chancellor, and Hitler assumed the title of Führer und Reichskanzler. On August 19 a plebiscite confirmed his new office with 88 percent of 43,529,710 votes cast.

Night of the Long Knives: newspaper coverageArticle about the Night of the Long Knives on the front page of the Pennsylvanian newspaper The Bethlehem Globe-Times, July 2, 1934.Timothy Hughes Rare and Early Newspapers

The crisis of June 1934 was the turning point of the regime. Although the army leaders congratulated themselves on the outcome, it was Hitler who, after a period of hesitation, had triumphantly reasserted his authority. Forced to choose, he had struck at the radicals and repudiated the “second revolution” but in doing so had used methods which only underlined the radical and revolutionary character of the regime he had established. Hitler celebrated his victory at the 1934 Nürnberg Rally, a spectacle immortalized in Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph des Willens (1935; Triumph of the Will).

Third Reich; Hitler, AdolfAn excerpt of Adolf Hitler's closing address at the Nürnberg Rally in September 1934 served as the climax for Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph des Willens (1935; Triumph of the Will). It is translated as: “The movement [National Socialism] is a living expression of our people and, therefore, a symbol of eternity. Long live the National Socialist movement! Long live Germany!”Public Domain

The totalitarian police state

The years between 1934 and World War II saw the steady elaboration of the totalitarian police state. The principal instrument of control was the unified police, security, and SS organization under the direction of Himmler and his chief lieutenant, Reinhard Heydrich. Schools, universities, the press, the theatre, and the arts were forced to follow the pattern of Nazi regimentation. The most determined efforts were made to indoctrinate the younger generation with the Nazi ideology through the schools and the compulsory Hitler Youth. The Nazification of public life was perhaps best displayed to the outside world at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Under pressure from the International Olympic Committee, Nazi authorities allowed a single Jewish athlete to join the German team, but Hitler made every effort to use the Games as a vehicle for Nazi propaganda.

The concordat which the Vatican had signed with the new German government on July 20, 1933, did not protect the Catholic community in Germany from constant interference and persecution by the Nazi authorities. The refusal of German Protestants to accept the authority of the Nazi-sponsored German Christian movement led to an equally bitter conflict between the Protestant churches and the state. This led to the arrest and persecution of many Protestant pastors, including Martin Niemöller (July 1937).

Anti-Semitism was an essential element of the Nazi ideology, and Jews were singled out for attack from the first day of Hitler’s chancellorship. A law of April 7, 1933, decreed the dismissal of Jews from government service and universities. They were also debarred from entering the professions. Under the Nürnberg Laws of September 15, 1935, marriages between Jews and persons of “German blood” were forbidden, and the Jews were virtually deprived of all rights. Their prewar persecution reached its climax on Kristallnacht (November 9–10, 1938), a pogrom carried out under the direction of the SS.

After Kristallnacht, the greater part of all Jewish property was confiscated, and the surviving Jews were effectively erased from public life in Germany. Vernichtung (“annihilation”) of the Jews became the ultimate goal of the Nazis’ anti-Semitic ideology. After the outbreak of war, Jews in occupied areas were confined to ghettoes or systematically killed. Mass shootings by Einsatzgruppen units gave way to the industrialized murder of millions in concentration and extermination camps. The Nazi regime killed victims from several other groups—homosexuals, Roma, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Poles, and political opponents were chief among them—but the “final solution to the Jewish question” remained paramount in the eyes of the Third Reich. Altogether, in German-occupied Europe, out of a prewar population of about 8.3 million Jews, 6 million were killed or died in extermination camps of starvation or disease.

Buchenwald camp prisonersPrisoners of Buchenwald concentration camp, near Weimar, Germany, April 16, 1945, days after the camp was liberated by American troops. Author Elie Wiesel is seventh from the left on the middle bunk, next to a vertical post. National Archives, Washington, D.C.

Rearmament

By an extensive program of expenditure on public works—afforestation, land improvement, road building—the Nazi government succeeded in reducing the number of registered unemployed from more than 6 million in January 1933 to about 2.6 million in December 1934. From 1935 onward rearmament on a massive scale rapidly changed the problem from one of mass unemployment to one of an acute labour shortage. This remarkable recovery, however, did not lead to any comparable rise in the standard of living, which was deliberately held down by wage and price stabilization in order to permit the diversion of the greatest possible proportion of the national resources to the creation of a powerful military force.

All other considerations were sacrificed to Hitler’s demand for the rearmament of Germany at double the rate that the military and economic experts thought possible. In September 1936 Hitler proclaimed a four-year plan and gave Göring plenipotentiary powers to execute it. Schacht became minister of economic affairs on August 2, 1934, and to him Hitler owed the expert planning of the finances of German rearmament as well as the elaborate network of controls over German foreign trade. Schacht, however, became increasingly critical of the reckless arms program and on November 26, 1937, resigned. Schacht remained minister without portfolio at Hitler’s insistence and until January 20, 1939, served as president of the Reichsbank as well. From the end of 1937, Göring was able to carry out Hitler’s economic plans in preparation for war without hindrance. Germany’s expenditure on armaments is estimated at more than 51 billion Reichsmarks in the six years before 1939, rising from less than 2 billion Reichsmarks in 1933–34 to 10 billion in 1936–37 and 16 billion in 1938–39.

Shortly after Schacht’s resignation, Hitler proceeded to reorganize the two principal institutions which had so far escaped the process of Gleichschaltung—the army and the foreign service. In January 1938 Hitler used the pretext of Blomberg’s marriage to a woman of questionable social standing to force his resignation and then assumed the office of commander in chief of the armed forces himself. The removal of the minister of defense, Gen. Werner von Fritsch, was accomplished with an unfounded charge of homosexuality. Although Fritsch challenged the charge and was exonerated by a court-martial, he was rendered persona non grata within the government. Hitler abolished the Ministry of Defense and replaced it with a separate High Command of the Armed Forces (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, OKW), which in fact acted as his personal staff. Sixteen senior generals were retired, and others were transferred to different posts.

In February 1938 Neurath was relieved of his post as foreign minister and replaced by the subservient Joachim von Ribbentrop, while the insignificant Walther Funk assumed office at the Ministry of Economics. Henceforth until the end of the war, Hitler’s arbitrary power over Germany was complete.

From the time that Hitler came to power, his unswerving aims were to overthrow the peace settlement of 1919 and to establish German hegemony in Europe. These aims, however, had to be disguised until German rearmament had made progress, and Hitler showed great skill in soothing the anxieties of the other powers with his constant talk of peace.

On October 14, 1933, Germany withdrew from the League of Nations and the disarmament conference. This was represented as a protest against the hypocrisy of the victor nations in refusing to keep their promise to follow Germany’s example after they had forced it to disarm. The nonaggression pact with Poland, signed on January 26, 1934, was used by Hitler as further evidence of his eagerness for peace. When a Nazi rising in Austria on July 25, 1934, failed to secure power, he was quick to repudiate his followers and send Papen to Vienna on a mission of conciliation.

After World War I the Saarland was placed under League of Nations administration, and the products of its valuable coal mines were directed to France. On January 13, 1935, a plebiscite was held to allow the region’s residents to choose union with France or Germany. When more than 90 percent voted in favour of a return to the Reich, Hitler declared that all causes of dispute between Germany and France had been removed. He evaded British and French schemes for a general European settlement, however, and on March 16, 1935, announced that Germany was reintroducing conscription with the aim of creating a peacetime army of 35 divisions. This open repudiation of the Treaty of Versailles involved a considerable risk, but the gamble came off. The other powers contented themselves with protests, and Hitler was encouraged to take bigger chances in the future.

Third ReichMembers of the Hitler Youth spelling “Saar,” one of Adolf Hitler's first territorial demands, c. 1935.Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

During the next few years, Hitler played with remarkable success upon the divisions between the other Western powers. He persuaded the British to sign the Anglo-German Naval Agreement (June 18, 1935), which was much resented in France, and he soon became the principal beneficiary of the quarrel between Italy and the Western powers over Ethiopia. In the United States the German-American Bund operated as a pro-Nazi paramilitary organization with the covert support of the Third Reich. The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 enabled Hitler to establish close working relations with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, and on October 25,1936, their two countries were linked in a coalition known as the Rome-Berlin Axis. Using the violent excesses of communist-backed forces in Spain to support his case, Hitler now redoubled his propaganda campaign against the dangers of communism with very considerable success in dividing and confusing public opinion in the Western countries.

The ratification of the Franco-Soviet treaty of mutual assistance of May 2, 1935, provided Hitler with a convenient pretext for the denunciation of the Locarno Pact and the remilitarization of the Rhineland (March 7, 1936). The fact that this second open breach of the Versailles treaty was allowed to pass without effective challenge not only increased Hitler’s confidence but had immediate repercussions in the alignment of the smaller powers. The alliance system that the French had built up in eastern Europe after 1919 began to show signs of strain.

On November 25, 1936, Ribbentrop concluded the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan, which gave a strong fillip to Hitler’s anti-Bolshevik propaganda campaign, and a year later (November 6, 1937) he secured the adhesion of Italy to the pact after Mussolini’s state visit to Germany in September 1937. By the end of 1937, Hitler was ready to take the offensive in foreign policy. German rearmament had already made considerable progress, and Hitler was convinced that France and Great Britain would never fight. He had driven a powerful wedge between the Soviet Union and the Western powers, and he had won Italy away from the Anglo-French camp to close cooperation with himself.